Business growth show – Consumer Culture

In this business growth TV show Ibrahim Ibrahim discusses how big brands like Illy are creating a culture, which consumers can participate in both through digital connectivity and in person.

Business growth show - Illy's Approach

Now, Illy used to be a coffee brand, it’s no longer a coffee brand, it’s no longer about silver tins of coffee
Illy is about a brand which absolutely engages customers with, yes, the cultural coffee, yes, coffee’s placed in society, yes, art and crockery and books on art.
Illy has become a culture brand. A culture of coffee, but also a culture in the big scheme of things.
And it has connected with a whole group of customers that are part of that brand, are part of their social network and it gives those customers, through constant connectedness, through digital, lots and lots of value about art, about coffee, yes, they can go and buy coffee as well, but it’s part of a bigger, bigger picture.
And when you get to an Illy shop, it’s not a coffee shop, it’s where this art and culture and sociability and debate and the whole idea of the old coffeehouses, comes to life.
But that won’t be a coffee shop and it isn’t, you know, at the moment it’s a container that opens up, arrives and closes down.
And more and more brands will do this, Marmite are doing it, Heinz are doing it.
______________________________________________________________________Connected Economy TV is following developments in retail and the digital economy. There will be another business growth show soon.

Business growth show – Consumer Culture

In this business growth TV show Ibrahim Ibrahim discusses how big brands like Illy are creating a culture, which consumers can participate in both through digital connectivity and in person.

Business growth show - Illy's Approach

Now, Illy used to be a coffee brand, it’s no longer a coffee brand, it’s no longer about silver tins of coffee
Illy is about a brand which absolutely engages customers with, yes, the cultural coffee, yes, coffee’s placed in society, yes, art and crockery and books on art.
Illy has become a culture brand. A culture of coffee, but also a culture in the big scheme of things.
And it has connected with a whole group of customers that are part of that brand, are part of their social network and it gives those customers, through constant connectedness, through digital, lots and lots of value about art, about coffee, yes, they can go and buy coffee as well, but it’s part of a bigger, bigger picture.
And when you get to an Illy shop, it’s not a coffee shop, it’s where this art and culture and sociability and debate and the whole idea of the old coffeehouses, comes to life.
But that won’t be a coffee shop and it isn’t, you know, at the moment it’s a container that opens up, arrives and closes down.
And more and more brands will do this, Marmite are doing it, Heinz are doing it.
______________________________________________________________________Connected Economy TV is following developments in retail and the digital economy. There will be another business growth show soon.

A golden era of incredible change. Disruptive innovation puts static businesses at risk. It is important to make changes in the workplace to survive. Dean Van Leeuwen discusses:

Disruptive innovation in a golden era of change

Disruptive innovation puts static businesses at risk. It is important to make changes in the workplace to survive, as Dean Van Leeuwen discusses.

Disruptive innovation can be great if businesses adapt.

We’re living in a golden era of change.
Amazing technological innovations that are happening at the moment.
We actually believe that the period that we are living during is going to have as big an impact as the industrial revolution. And you can look back every sort of 150, 200 years there’s inflection points where everything seems to change.
The size of forces just come rushing in and they converge and they change and they transform the world dramatically. And we believe that we’re living during one of those times.
I believe that historians will name the period that we are living in at the moment.
And like that has important implications for business leaders. Because if that prediction is true, even if it’s just half true, then that means that you can’t go back to your workplaces and take last year’s strategy and add 10%.
continue doing the same things over and over again.
It means that you can’t go back and just do the same things that you’ve done over and over again just because they’ve worked in… in the past.
And the surest way to fail in a world that is changing like this is just to continue doing the same things over and over again.
Connected Economy TV will continue to discuss disruptive innovation in future TV Shows.

Connected marketing that uses digital channels to engage with customers is more effective and cheaper than what came before, as Stan Rapp explains in this TV show.

Connected Marketing is a fundamental change

Technology has changed marketing, fundamentally. It is changed it in the best possible way. It has lowered the cost, and increased your opportunity to come up with a tremendous ROI. There never has been a better time for marketers. Once you have a website, and once you have Facebook, and once you have Twitter, you are in better touch with your customers than the traditional direct marketers ever were with their direct mail. People are welcoming your messages. They're looking for you.
If you are interested in ideas about connected marketing and the digital economy, please browse more videos on Connected Economy TV.

Digital engagement not just a buzz word

Digital engagement gives businesses a fantastic way to connect with customers and build their business, as Don Peppers explains in this TV show.

Digital engagement: Who do consumers trust?

If a business wants a home in the future, they have to have their own collection of friends who wish them well, of customers who want them to succeed, of customers who want the best for the brand because it's also the best for them. I think a lot of businesses think of engagement as sort of the marketing buzz word du jour. But it's not a buzz word. it encapsulates a very, very important real thing, that businesses today have more capability to actually participate in interactions and conversations and relationships with individual customers, one customer at a time, then they've ever had before.
Keep an eye on Connected Economy TV if you are interested in digital engagement. There will be more expert discussion and industry success stories.

What can social networking do for start-ups? Business development tips from Louis Gray

Communication strategy for start-ups

Communication strategy should start with a blog and expand on Twitter and Facebook according to Louis Gray, who gives his business development tips in this TV show.

Communication strategy and social networking

Companies getting started in this type of environment where the economics are difficult can actually leverage this type of weakness to look bigger than they are. One of the best things about social media is that people don't know the person behind the activity all the time. And so you have the tendency, if you do things right, to look like you're big, look like you're engaged, and get the word out. Social media is very cost effective. Somebody who can actively work social media can save tremendous amount of dollars versus traditional advertising. As a startup, your product is going to sell itself through differentiation. If you get bought in people who will communicate with you.
So as companies, be they startups or established, get started in social media, the first thing they want to do is have a central location where people can find out as much as they can about the company. Typically that's a blog. A blog can enable personal one-to-one communication from the highest levels within the company. After that, it really makes sense to get onto Twitter and Facebook and these other networks to hear what's being said, both about you and the industry. But without that blog, there's nowhere to go. So you make sure you have that blog, and then build out the social media ecosystem underneath that, which may include the other networks.
Keep an eye on Connected Economy TV for more discussion on communication strategy and social media.

Access to data comes with responsibility

Businesses have access to data from more and more individuals who are entering email addresses and phone numbers in to online forms. In this TV show Gerald Lawless explains why respecting individuals information is paramount.

Access to data in hospitality

In the hotel business we really have to understand our responsibility to our guests to maintain the confidentiality of that data. And this is something that is so abused around the world. I mean we all receive these silly phone calls and you wonder how people got your mobile number, apart from me putting it on my business card, which always doesn’t help. But it is important that we treat that with great respect, with great care. And yes, use it but use it in a way that doesn’t annoy the guest, and this is important. So we write and say, “Do you want to communicate with us?” If they don’t want to, well then that’s fine and we respect very much the confidentiality of the guest data that we hold.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow discussions around access to data and data usage.

UK innovation: we’re not quite world leaders

In this TV show John Kay discusses UK innovation. He compares new business development here to what is happening in other countries'.

More UK innovation please

I don’t think we have lost the art of developing new businesses and there are lots of people in the small, medium size enterprise sector who are developing exciting new businesses. But I think our success in developing businesses with competitive advantages over the last two or three decades doesn’t compare very well with the United States on the one hand that has created really exciting businesses of the Apple, Amazon, Google type or with a country like Germany where a lot of quite long established power house businesses have gone on developing their businesses successfully in new markets. There are some British companies that have been successful in these kind of ways but not enough and we need to try and ensure there are more of them.
Connected Economy TV will continue to look out for examples of UK innovation and will be following the surrounding discussion.

Business strategy models for Finance Directors

Business strategy models should be built around an understanding of funding, investment and profit. In this TV show Sara Daw of The FD Centre discusses of Financial Directors can win the war.

Financial business strategy models

In this environment I think the role that the FD can play right now is understanding what the core business engine is. So what are the core drivers of profit and cash of course? And once they’ve understood that, to build the strategy around that. Make sure that if they have to resize or right size the business they cut back more so they’ve got extra to reinvest in the new strategy going forward. Make sure that they build the strategy around that so they have a clear vision and they have a plan to get there. Quite importantly is that the FD does that classic thing of pouring cold water over the ideas that the business owner has. That’s risk assessment. And we would expect every FD to do that. It has to be done in a positive way. But it’s absolutely what the business needs. So understand the risks of a business strategy and make an assessment on that. And then I think the FD needs to understand the timetable, how to implement the strategy and own the timetable. So project manage that, hold people accountable, and lastly I think they need to make sure that they’ve got the right type of strategic funding to support that strategy, the right mix of funding and really understand that different types of funding are going to cost differently. Then really build the operational engine to support that strategy which delivers time and money to the entrepreneur and then build, an advisor community around the business all aligned to help, force that strategy through.
Thank you for watching this video about business strategy models and Finance Directors. Keep an eye on the new TV shows being added to Connected Economy TV.

Social media usage is today’s reality

Social media usage has become a normal part of life and businesses should be using it as a way to understand customers. In this TV Don Pepper explains why ignoring the conversation is 1950s thinking.

Social media usage in business

Today, if you don't pay attention to your customer engagement, then what that means is you're not paying attention to the conversation. You're not paying attention to what your customers are saying about you, to each other. You're not engaged in that yourself. You're not paying attention to the level of attractiveness that your brand--. I mean what kind of brand manager would not want to know how engaged his customers are. I don't know, a brand manager in the 1950s maybe, I don't know. You're not in Kansas now. This is reality. Facebook and MySpace and YouTube and Flickr and LinkedIn and Orkut and all of the other kinds of social media sites. It's different. It's different now.

If you enjoyed this video about social media usage, please browse more shows on Connected Economy TV.

Louis Gray explains how to drive you social marketing strategy with a great blog

Connected marketing through blogging

Businesses now use more connected marketing. In this TV show Louis Gray explains how to drive you social marketing strategy with a great blog.

Connected Marketing and social strategy

If you're going to look at a blog, and you have to make frequent updates, you want to have to really know your product, and know your market and know your industry and care about it. If something looks forced, it is forced. And people aren't going to want to engange with something that looks like you did it just because you were told to. In order to have a successful blog that gets engagement from readers and potential customers, you need to really know your industry and study it. And have an energy to engage. And to have unique articles that can come out with the level of frequency that people will be return visitors, and find out that you're participating.
There are a number of companies who have embraced blogging. Two of them, and specific example, include Sun Microsystems and Cisco. Both of those companies have managed to take what's typically a very large enterprise, and turn that into a social experience for you have communities. Each one of those companies encourages its employees to participate, and speak on behalf of the company, with limits. You don't want to disparage the company. You want to speak about its products and its customers in a good light. And not to violate any kind of confidentiality and secrets you may have with partners or the company itself. It's been fantastic to see these companies that are traditionally closed, open up and really start to engage the rest of the blogosphere.
Companies that operate blogs, typically you want to see an update no less than once a week. The truth is, if you don't have enough content of unique nature to publish more than once a week, maybe you shouldn't be blogging. There's some people who also publish much more frequently than that. Upwards of multiple times a day. That depends on the topic, the subject matter, and what the individual knows about that space, where they can deliver unique content with value frequently.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow ideas around connected marketing. Look out for more shows from Louis Gray.

Business leadership video: Worthy CEO’s

This business leadership video, featuring John Kay, discusses how CEOs could make better decisions.

Business leadership video: CEOs and shareholders

Well I think the CEO who wants to come in and make a big difference has to persuade, ought to have to persuade his major asset manager shareholders that the difference he is making is actually a difference that is worth making. This actually is not just a matter of encouraging shareholder involvement. I’ve talked about the destruction of ICI and GEC and if one’s frank that was actually encouraged by the shareholders. What we need is shareholders who actually have a better understanding of the long run dynamics of business.
If you enjoyed this business leadership video, please browse mote TV shows on Connected Economy TV.

Many companies want to be engaged content marketing, but they are really producing the same old “thought leadership” pieces where they tell stories about their own products. The 2017 Brilliant Minds Lord’s Showcase in London shows how to create truly strategic content marketing. Location: The Long Room, Lord’s Cricket, Ground Central London The 2017

As the convergence of TV and digital continues, Google now claims YouTube advertising effectiveness is greater than TV. Matt Brittin, Google’s top-ranking European executive, is set to unveil a report analysing ad campaigns across eight countries that show in 80% of cases YouTube ads were

The rise of Bernie Sanders, seemingly from nowhere came as no surprise to us at yBC.tv. In our video about Next Gen Consumerization, our friends at the Leading Edge Forum made a number of predictions about how technology is changing the world. And in relation